3 of the most famous viruses in history

At this point, it is practically impossible for anyone to be unaware of the vast number of threats on the Internet, all of them ready to trap us and infect us in order to obtain valuable data such as bank account numbers, email addresses, passwords, and anything else that might interest cybercriminals. From OCEANO IT, our company specializing in IT solutions and IT maintenance in Barcelona and Madrid, we bring you the 3 most famous viruses in history

Many of today"s threats come from viruses and trojans created long ago, and it has always been said that to understand current threats, it"s good to look back and see where it all began. Obviously, it would take us a long time to review each and every one of the first viruses, but we will recall some that, at the time, caused significant damage to both businesses and individuals.

Melissa was one of the most recognized viruses several years ago. It spread under the pretense of granting access to 80 paid pornographic websites. Many people fell for it, and when they executed the virus, it would automatically propagate to the first 50 contacts in Outlook Express, which was widely used in the mid-90s, affecting millions of people worldwide.

Despite the damage caused, its creator, David Smith, was only sentenced to 20 months in prison, but the worst part was the second penalty: a lifetime ban from using a computer with Internet access.

MyDoom was one of the most destructive viruses from a few years ago, causing over 38 billion dollars in losses. According to security firm McAfee, MyDoom managed to slow down at least 10% of the entire Internet and blocked access to about 50% of some websites.

MyDoom spread in 2004, and was mainly distributed through the most popular P2P file-sharing networks at the time, such as KaZaA. Its evolution allowed it to spread via email, and when the malicious code was executed, it launched denial-of-service attacks against different search engines such as Google, Altavista, and Lycos, among others.

This caused these platforms to lose huge amounts of traffic, which bothered these companies so much that they even offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the creator of MyDoom, but nothing was ever discovered.

Stuxnet was created by a group of Israeli engineers with the help of another American group. It was designed to damage the infrastructure of a nation, and they achieved something very serious: changing the speed of nuclear centrifuges at a plant in Iran so that they would self-destruct, ultimately delaying the nuclear program for quite some time.

This virus infected systems via a USB memory stick, which was brought into the nuclear plant itself, where the virus spread throughout the system, achieving its objective. Finally, and due to the country"s policies, the extent of the damage will never be known, but it was surely worth millions.